She turned and spat on his vest, and on him anew she poured her condemnation. “_You_, indeed, the gentleman with an account to pay, the hero, the avenger! I wish my teeth had found your neck at the head of Aora Glen.” She stood in the half-night, foaming over with hate and evil words, her taunts stinging like asps. “Take off the tartan, ladies!” she screamed; “off with men’s apparel and on with the short-gown.” Her cries rang so over the land that she was a danger bruiting our presence to the whole neighbourhood, and it was in a common panic we ran with one accord from her in the direction of the loch-head. The man with the want took up the rear, whimpering as he ran, feeling again, it might be, a child fleeing from maternal chastisement: the rest of us went silently, all but Stewart, who was a cocky little man with a large bonnet pulled down on the back of his head like a morion, to hide the absence of ears that had been cut off by the law for some of his Appin adventures. He was a person who never saw in most of a day’s transactions aught but the humour of them, and as we ran from this shrieking beldame of Camus, he was choking with laughter at the ploy. “Royal’s my race,” said he at the first ease to our running--“Royal’s my race, and I never thought to run twice in one day from an enemy. Stop your greeting, Callum, and not be vexing our friends the gentlemen.” “What a fury!” said Master Gordon. “And that’s the lady of omens! What about her blessing now?” “Ay, and what about her prophecies?” asked M’Iver, sharply. “She was not so far wrong, I’m thinking, about the risks of Inverlochy; the heather’s above the gall indeed.” “But at any rate,” said I, “MacCailein’s head is not on a pike.” “You must be always on the old key,” cried M’Iver, angrily. “Oh man, man, but you’re sore in want of tact” His face was throbbing and hoved. “Here’s half-a-dozen men,” said he, “with plenty to occupy their wits with what’s to be done and what’s to happen them before they win home, and all your talk is on a most vexatious trifle. Have you found me, a cousin of the Marquis, anxious to query our friends here about the ins and outs of the engagement? It’s enough for me that the heather’s above the gall. I saw this dreary morning the sorrow of my life, and I’m in no hurry to add to it by the value of a single tear.” Sonachan was quite as bitter. “I don’t think,” said he, “that it matters very much to you, sir, what Argile may have done or may not have done; you should be glad of your luck (if luck it was and no design), that kept you clear of the trouble altogether.” And again he plunged ahead of us with Ardkinglas, to avoid my retort to an impertinence that, coming from a younger man, would have more seriously angered me. The minister by now had recovered his wind, and was in another of his sermon moods, with this ruffling at Mac-Cailein’s name as his text.